Knowing what we do now about economic bellwethers, a forecast that puts Ireland as the EU's fastest-growing economy in 2016, while welcome, will be seen for what it is. A forecast.

Laurence J Peter - the man who came up with the notion that everyone eventually rises to their own level of incompetence - also said that: "An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today."

Predicting precisely how an economy so exposed to so many potentially destabilising factors as Ireland's will perform is, at the best of times, a fraught affair.

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